| London Borough of Southwark | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| — London borough — | |||
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| Motto: United to Serve | |||
| Southwark shown within Greater London | |||
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom | ||
| Constituent country | England | ||
| Region | London | ||
| Ceremonial county | Greater London | ||
| Status | London borough | ||
| Admin HQ | {{{adminhq}}} | ||
| Incorporated | 1 April 1965 | ||
| Government | |||
| • Type | London borough council | ||
| • Body | Southwark London Borough Council | ||
| • Leadership | Leader & Cabinet (Labour) | ||
| • Mayor | — (non-political) | ||
| • MPs | Harriet Harman Simon Hughes Tessa Jowell |
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| • London Assembly | Valerie Shawcross AM for Lambeth and Southwark | ||
| • EU Parliament | London | ||
| Area | |||
| • Total | 11.1 sq mi (28.85 km2) | ||
| Area rank | 312th (of 326) | ||
| Population (2010 est.) | |||
| • Total | 287,000 | ||
| • Rank | 33rd (of 326) | ||
| • Density | 25,765.2/sq mi (9,948/km2) | ||
| • Ethnicity[1] | 52.6% White British 2.6% White Irish 9.1% Other White 1.2% White & Black Caribbean 0.8% White & Black African 0.7% White & Asian 1.1% Other Mixed 2.6% Indian 0.6% Pakistani 1.6% Bangladeshi 0.9% Other Asian 6.9% Black Caribbean 13.3% Black African 1.7% Other Black 2.6% Chinese 1.6% Other |
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| Time zone | GMT (UTC0) | ||
| • Summer (DST) | BST (UTC+1) | ||
| Postcodes | {{{postcode_areas}}} | ||
| Police force | Metropolitan Police | ||
| Website | www.southwark.gov.uk | ||
The London Borough of Southwark i/ˈsʌðərk/ is a London borough in south east London, England. It is directly south of the River Thames and the City of London, and forms part of Inner London.
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Southwark got its name in the 9th century but was first settled in the Roman period. The London Borough of Southwark was formed in 1965 from the former area of the Metropolitan Borough of Southwark, the Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell, and the Metropolitan Borough of Bermondsey.
The borough borders the City of London and the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to the north (the River Thames forming the boundary), the London Borough of Lambeth to the west and the London Borough of Lewisham to the east. To the south are the London Borough of Bromley and the London Borough of Croydon.
At the 2001 census Southwark had a population of 244,866. Southwark is ethnically 63% white, 16% black African and 8% black Caribbean. 31% of householders are owner–occupiers.
Tower Bridge, the Millennium Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge, Southwark Bridge and London Bridge all connect across to the City of London are within the borough. The skyscraper Shard London Bridge, under construction, will be the tallest building in the EU when completed. The Tate Modern Art Gallery, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and the Imperial War Museum are within the borough. Borough Market near London Bridge is probably London's most famous food market.
Southwark has many notable places of Christian worship, Anglican, Roman Catholic and independent non-conformist. These include Charles Spurgeon's Metropolitan Tabernacle, Southwark Cathedral (Church of England), St George's Cathedral (Roman Catholic), and St Mary's Cathedral (Greek Orthodox. London's Norwegian Church and Finnish Church and the Swedish Seamen's Church are all in Rotherhithe. St George the Martyr is the oldest church in Greater London dedicated to England's Patron Saint, the redundant St Thomas Church is now the Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret. The other redundant church is Francis Bedford's in Trinity Church Square, now a recording studio, Henry Wood Hall.
Whilst Christianity is the dominant religion of the borough, several religious minorities are also active, and places of worship for Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus and Jews may be found.[2]
According to the 2001 Census, approximately 28% of Southwark identified as non-religious, or chose not to state their faith.[3]
Southwark has many literary associations. Charles Dickens set several of his novels in the old borough where he lived as a young man. The site of The Tabard inn (featured in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales), the White Hart inn and the George Inn which survives.
The rebuilt Globe Theatre and its exhibition on the Bankside remind us of the area's being the birthplace of classical theatre. There is also the remains of the Rose Theatre. In 2007 the Unicorn Theatre for Children was opened on Tooley Street with both the Southwark Playhouse and the Union Theatre having premises in Bermondsey Street. The Menier Chocolate Factory combines a theatre and exhibition space.
The borough is the location of international-standard museums and galleries; the Imperial War Museum and its outpost HMS Belfast moored at the Pool, Dulwich Picture Gallery the oldest public gallery in Britain, and one of the most modern, the Tate Modern. The Bankside Gallery is the headquarters of the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers. Specialist and local collections are represented at the London Fire Brigade Museum, the Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret, The Clink, the Cuming Museum and the London Bridge Experience and London Tombs under London Bridge. The Golden Hinde replica is at St Mary Overie Dock and nearby are the remains of the medieval Winchester Palace which is a scheduled ancient monument.
Peckham Library, designed by Will Alsop won the Stirling Prize for modern architecture; another architecturally innovative library is under construction at Canada Water in Rotherhithe.
The Livesey Children's Museum was a free children's museum given to the people of Southwark by the great industrialist Sir George Livesey of the Metropolitan Gas Works. It was closed by Southwark council in 2008.
MOCA, London, as curated by the artist Michael Petry, is a free museum located in Peckham Rye dedicated to exposing and showcasing new cutting-edge artists and their work.
The northern-end of the borough opposite the City has proven attractive to major professional services firms HQs, such as Hewitt Associates and also notably international corporate solicitors and chartered accountancy concerns. These are almost all housed in the London Bridge City or the More London developments there. These include, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, Norton Rose, Ernst & Young and Lawrence Graham.
The press and publishing industry is also well represented, Financial Times has its head office in Southwark Bridge Road.[4][5] Express Group Newspapers on Blackfriars Road, IPC Magazines at the Blue Fin building Southwark Street and Evening Standard and Daily Mail at Surrey Quays. Campus Living Villages UK also has its head office in the borough.[6]
Some of the old industrial and wharfside heritage remains at the now defunct Surrey Commercial Docks now Surrey Quays, including Greenland Dock and Baltic Quay, where major residential schemes were developed in the 1980s and 1990s. Near Tower Bridge old warehouses have been converted to new mixed uses at Butler's Wharf and Hay's Wharf. Similarly, further west, the Oxo Tower now hosts restaurants shops and housing.
Southwark is the home to the Greater London Authority at City Hall.
London South Bank University (LSBU) at its principal Elephant and Castle site has over 23,000 students and 1,700 staff. The Chancellor is the newscaster Sir Trevor McDonald.
The University of the Arts London has two of its colleges in the borough - at Elephant and Castle is the London College of Communication and on Peckham Road is the Camberwell College of Arts.
The largest university teaching hospital in Europe King's College London is at the Guy's Hospital site, merging the teaching activities of the Guy's, St Thomas' and King's College Hospitals here. St Thomas' was founded in the mid-12th Century in the borough and parts of it remain at St Thomas Street; Guy's was founded opposite this in 1725. The Salvation Army maintains the William Booth Memorial Training College at Denmark Hill.
Many state schools are operated under the umbrella of the borough council [1] as Local Education Authority (LEA) for the area.
Community secondary schools include:
Primary schools include:
A particularly large proportion of schools operate outside the LEA, as Foundation schools or City Academies, including:
Dulwich in the southern part of the borough has a number of private and public schools:
Southwark has a large variety of housing, including substantial areas of council housing, including very large estates such as the Aylesbury Estate and the Heygate Estate. Southwark is the London Borough with the largest amount of social housing that is still under direct council control.[7] It also has an active Tenant management organisation sector, of which Leathermarket JMB is the largest.[8]
The old Southwark borough had been the location of many Courts and Prisons of Royal Prerogative, the Marshalsea and King’s Bench, as well as the manorial and borough courts the Surrey County magistrates had both sessions and a prison there. The Inner London Sessions House on Newington Causeway descends from these. The Southwark Coroner's Court in Tennis Street dates back to the charter of 1550. In 1964 Southwark Crown Court was opened at English Grounds near London Bridge for local requirements, giving the borough two Crown Courts. Since 1994 the Crown Court for the west London Boroughs, previously based at Knightsbridge, was rehoused in Southwark as Blackfriars Crown Court. When the decision was taken to separate the judiciary and legislature, in 2007, by transforming the House of Lords Judicial Committee of Law Lords into the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom it was given the Middlesex Guildhall in Parliament Square as its residence. This meant that the crown court for Westminster's judges sitting there were transferred to the Southwark Crown Court, hence the senior judge holds the honorific title of the Recorder of Westminster. Apart from these four crown courts (ILCC Newington, Southwark, Wesminster, Blackfriars) Southwark’s local magistrates sit at two courts in the borough, Tower Bridge and Camberwell Green Magistrates Courts.
Few boroughs can boast a single major Court, Southwark has seven jurisdictions.
The Mayor of Southwark for 2009-2010 was Cllr Tayo Situ (Peckham Ward), who was elected on 19 May 2010. He replaced Cllr Jeff Hook who served from 2009-2010. Cllr Tayo Situ died on the 9th May 2011, after a brave fight against cancer.
The Deputy Mayor, Cllr Lorraine Lauder MBE (Faraday Ward), was elected Mayor of Southwark at the Annual Meeting of Council Assembly on 24 May 2011.
The council is run by a Leader and Cabinet Cabinet, chaired by council leader Cllr Peter John. Following the election in 2010 the Cabinet is Labour, replacing the previous Liberal Democrat and Conservative Party coalition.
The two supporters on the coat of arms are an Elizabethan player dressed to play Hamlet to the left, indicating the theatrical heritage of the area, and the youth on the right side is the Esquire from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The coat of arms is an amalgam of elements of the three constituent Metropolitan Boroughs arms. The chequered band represents the three boroughs together. The cross was a common feature of Southwark and Camberwell. The well in the centre of the shield is a 'canting' reference to Camberwell and the cinquefoils represent the Dulwich area of Camberwell, while the ship on the top left refers to the maritime history of Bermondsey and was part of the Rotherhithe insignia. The rose on the right is from the Southwark arms where it represented St Saviour's parish, i.e. the Cathedral.
Southwark is twinned with Langenhagen in Germany, Clichy in France, and Cambridge in the United States.[9][10]
A Labour council was elected in May 2010. Previously, a Liberal Democrat/Conservative coalition had run Southwark Council since 2002.
Summary of council election results:
| Overall control | Labour | Lib Dem | Conservative | Others | |
| 2010 | Labour | 35 | 25 | 3 | 0 |
| 2006 | Lib Dem/Cons Coalition | 28 ** | 28 ** | 6 | 1 (Green) |
| 2002 | Lib Dem/No overall control | 28 | 30 | 5 | - |
| 1998 | Labour/No overall control | 33(31)* | 27 | 4 | 0(2)* |
| 1994 | Labour | - | - | - | - |
| 1990 | Labour | - | - | - | - |
| 1986 | Labour | - | - | - | - |
| 1982 | Labour | - | - | - | - |
| 1978 | Labour | - | - | - | - |
| 1974 | Labour | - | - | - | - |
| 1971 | Labour | - | - | - | - |
| 1968 | Labour | - | - | - | - |
| 1964 | Labour | - | - | - | - |
(*)Labour won 33 seats in 1998, but 2 members subsequently resigned the whip, leaving no overall control.
(**)Cllr Danny McCarthy (Cathedrals ward) defected from the Libdems to the Labour Party after the 2006 election. Cllr Ola Oyewunmi (Peckham ward) resigned the Labour whip in December 2009, and was admitted to the Liberal Democrat group in January 2010. Cllr Ade Lasaki (South Bermondsey ward) resigned the Lib Dem whip and was admitted to the Labour group in March 2010. Cllr Susan Elan Jones resigned as councillor for the Lane ward to stand for a parliamentary seat in Wales. Her resignation was after the date at which a by-election can be held, leaving the seat vacant until the local elections in May 2010.
Labour were elected to run the council on 6 May 2010, following 4 years of a formal Liberal Democrat/ Tory coalition (the Conservatives held 2/10 executive positions, including deputy leader).
The borough is covered by three parliamentary constituencies:
Operated by Thames Clipper
In 2003, the London Borough of Southwark started a blue plaque scheme for the commemoration of notable residents notably including living people in the awards.[11] The London Borough of Southwark awards Blue Plaques through popular vote following public nomination. Unlike the English Heritage scheme, the original building is not necessary for nomination.
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